If Google Forms Can Google It… It’s Obsolete

Google Forms Auto Predicts Your Answer Choices

Google Forms came out with 6 updates to making Google Forms Quizzes. One of the updates is Google Forms will guess your correct answer and wrong answers! The opportunity to save time is always appreciated! (Note: new announced features are not necessarily pushed out immediately. Additionally, features roll out and can take up to a couple of weeks depending on if your G Suite admin has rapid release turned on.) However, if Google Forms can look up the correct answer and a bunch of wrong answers… what skill is this exactly? This is a demonstration that this skill has been replaced by robots.

Technology Changes How We Do Things

Disruptive technology does not just make our tasks more efficient, they change things. They make things obsolete. Ask Blockbuster. Probably one of the most disruptive technologies ever has been the search engine. “Google It” and “I looked it up on YouTube.” The ability to quickly find information anywhere any time changes how we learn, how we spend our money, and has made a lot of things obsolete. Encyclopedia Britannica is no longer making encyclopedias. A challenge with being a teacher in the 21st century is how fast the technology is coming. This week Google had it’s big Google I/O where robots will make phone calls for you to set up your hair appointments.

Wake Up Call

This new feature in Google Forms should be a wake up call that it is time to evaluate what are the skills of the future? What curriculum needs to be updated, what is now obsolete, and what new things need to be taught. With as quickly as technology moves, school curriculum decisions can no longer move at a snail’s pace. Think about all the technology advancements in just this last year let alone the last 15 years. 15 years from now our Kindergarteners today will out on their own interacting with a world that WILL look much different than it does today and dramatically different from when we went to school. Skills, knowledge, and values that helped us to be successful will not necessarily be what our students need 15 years from now. They are obsolete or are becoming obsolete.

Growth Mindset

If I had to pick any one quality that is essential for an educator it would be a growth mindset. That we do not get stuck in the ways things used to be. That we do not find one solution that worked for us, or even worked last year, and marry it. Society, culture, technology, life changes constantly. When our favorite quiz making tool no longer is compatible with new computers or they go out of business do we cry about it or see it as an opportunity to rethink rather than redo. How do I get my Word documents that I print out for kids into Google Docs is the wrong question. It’s not about replicating old ways of doing things into new technology, it’s rethinking what we are doing. It’s being open to the possibilities that technology allows. Now that I am using Google Docs what features of this allow me to change the assignment, do something different?

Are Your Quizzes Obsolete?

Yes.

Probably yes. Do not ask “how can I lock down the computers so I can keep asking the same questions.” Get realisies that technology has made them obsolete. Can you imagine how things would be different for Blockbuster had they not laughed at video streaming?

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